I’ve obtained a copy of an interesting letter that Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote to his protégé, President Barack Obama, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Souter’s announcement of his decision to retire from the Court. I will post a PDF of the letter shortly. [Update: Here’s the letter.] In the meantime, I’ll call attention, in this post and two or three others, to some of its highlights. The express purpose of Tribe’s letter is to urge that Obama nominate Elena Kagan to the Souter vacancy. But before making his affirmative case for Kagan, Tribe argues strongly against the...

One wonders how Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center managed to get a hold of a private letter sent to President Obama by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe advising him against nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but be that as it may, its contents are quite interesting and show just how nakedly political Tribe’s view of a justice really is and also how little he thinks of Sotomayor. In the May 2009 letter (PDF link here), Tribe advises Obama to refrain from choosing Sotomayor because “she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think...

Sen. Harry's Reid's support for President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominees has cost him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association in his re-election bid. The NRA is a force in rural states like Nevada where many voters own guns and hunt. The absence of the NRA's blessing represents a setback that Reid's campaign was quick to address Friday by noting that NRA executive Wayne LaPierre once called him a "true champion of the Second Amendment." Christopher W. Cox, chairman of the NRA's Political Victory Fund, said Friday that the organization strongly opposed the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the...

Mysterious Group Buys Building Next to Ground Zero For Mosque Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Jim Hoft A mysterous Muslim group with unknown sponsors has purchased a building steps away from Ground Zero. Hudson New York reported: An identified group with unknown sponsors has purchased building steps away from where the WorldTrade Center once stood — to turn it into potentially one of the largest New York City mosques. At the moment the building, the old Burlington Coat Factory, already serves as a mini-mosque: an iron grill lifts every Friday afternoon for a little known Imam leading prayers a few yards...

One of the odd dichotomies in the academic career of recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan is her militant opposition to the U. S. military’s ban on homosexuality and her equally fervent embrace of the Shariah law of the Mideast that proscribes death for homosexuals. Offhand, the only link between the two seems to be a hostility to western traditions. We have gone to some lengths at Accuracy in Academia to cover the former. Over at the Center for Security Policy, Christine Brim exhaustively documents the latter. Among other things: 1. “With Kagan’s direction, Harvard’s Islamic Legal Studies Program...

http://www.PriestsForLife.org Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests For Life, gives very clear reasoning on why Elena Kagan should not be confirmed to the Supreme Court. In this video, he uses the words of the abortionist themselves, documented in Supreme Court testimony, to describe the procedure that Elena Kagan herself, supports: "The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix." (This is from the Supreme Court's 2007 abortion decision.) Abortionist Martin Haskell said, under oath, "We would attack the lower extremity first, remove, you...

(VIDEO AT LINK) Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said that Jesus’s Golden Rule inspired him to vote to confirm Elena Kagan to the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested it would be a good thing for his Senate colleagues to also ponder Jesus’s words as they prepared to vote on Kagan. “It is divine in its orientation, and it is probably something that would serve us all well if we thought about it at moments such as this,” Sen. Graham said on the Senate floor, as he pointed his colleagues to the Golden Rule and counseled them to look...

Same-Sex Marriage: A federal judge decides marriage is a constitutional right and overturns California's Proposition 8 forbidding such unions. The issue is headed to a Supreme Court that Elena Kagan will be sitting on. The imperial judiciary has struck again, with Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker striking down California's Proposition 8, passed in November 2008 with 52% of the vote, on the grounds that the voter-approved law was a violation of gay couples' civil rights. Walker's ruling follows a Massachusetts federal judge's ruling last month that the state's married gay couples, also established by judicial fiat, were being wrongly...

Few fireworks erupted as the Senate opened up floor debate over Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan this week. Conventional wisdom remains that President Barack Obama’s second nomination to the high court will be confirmed with little trouble.Despite the appearance of a fait accompli, numerous conservative groups have provided a wide range of reasons to oppose the Kagan nomination. Among the oft listed concerns are: her lack of experience, her perceived hostility to the military and free speech, her abortion and gay rights records, and her apparent reverence for foreign law. All these points have acted to obscure what some argue...

"We're not giving this man an opportunity to really -- we keep hitting him with all of these things but reality is he's done more in two years than any other president since 1930," liberal commentator and MSNBC contributor Karen Hunter said. "Elena Kagan, that will make two females on the Supreme Court out of four in the history of America and he's not progressive?" she asked.

Just when you thought there couldn't be any more players in the ongoing soap opera over the hunt for President Obama's original birth certificate and his constitutional eligibility for office, there comes yet another name: Elena Kagan. Yes, the same Elena Kagan nominated by the commander in chief to be the next justice on the U.S. Supreme Court has actually been playing a role for some time in the dispute over whether Obama is legally qualified to be in the White House. Here's the connection. Kagan served as solicitor general of the United States from March 2009 until May of...

'She should not be a justice when she's defrauded the Supreme Court' Breaking News: Declaration Alliance has retained noted corruption watchdog attorney Larry Klayman to file an ethics complaint seeking to have Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan disbarred from practicing before the court she aspires to join – and possibly subjected to criminal prosecution – for her role in an escalating scandal. Kagan's political maneuvers while an attorney for President Bill Clinton led to language authored by her becoming fraudulently accepted as "official findings" of a medical "expert panel." Kagan's inserted language misled the federal courts, including the Supreme Court,...

·11250 Waples Mill Road · Fairfax, Virginia 22030 ·800-392-8683 Last Chance To OPPOSE Elena Kagan’s Confirmation to U.S. Supreme Court Friday, July 30, 2010 On Tuesday, July 20, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 to send Elena Kagan’s Supreme Court nomination on to the full Senate for a vote. The full Senate vote on the confirmation will occur the week of August 2nd. NOW is the time to contact your U.S. Senators and strongly urge them to OPPOSE and filibuster the Kagan nomination! As we’ve been reporting in these pages, on July 1, in a letter to the...

Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson announced late Friday he would vote against the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. In a statement released this evening, Sen. Nelson said, "I have heard concerns from Nebraskans regarding Ms. Kagan, and her lack of a judicial record makes it difficult for me to discount the concerns raised by Nebraskans, or to reach a level of comfort that these concerns are unfounded. Therefore, I will not vote to confirm Ms. Kagan’s nomination." Nelson is the only Democrat to oppose Kagan at this point. Five Republicans, on the other hand, have said they will support...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) today made the following statement regarding the nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the United States Supreme Court. Senator Gregg stated, “The Senate’s duty to provide advice and consent on Presidential nominations to the Supreme Court is one of its most significant constitutional responsibilities. Separate and distinct from its legislative function, the confirmation process requires the Senate to put aside politics and conduct a frank and evenhanded review of the nominee’s record, qualifications and demonstrated ability to apply the law in a fair and impartial manner. “I have met personally with Solicitor...

Judicial Watchdog Wants Elena Kagan Disbarred Over Abortion Distortions Washington, DC -- Larry Klayman, the judicial watchdog who is the founder of Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch USA, says he is filing papers to have Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan disbarred. He says he wants to see that happen because he believes Kagan misled the Senate Judiciary Committee during her hearings. http://LifeNews.com/nat6584.html

The Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan provided key exchanges about the Commerce Clause, natural rights, and other issues that have convinced me to vote against her nomination. Based on her own testimony, sheâ€™ll violate her oath as soon as sheâ€™s sworn in. The hearings, though, were not merely about Elena Kagan per se but about the political culture and philosophy that shaped her views. Her answers exposed profound flaws in the prevailing Big Government wisdom of the Supreme Court and Washington over the past few decades. When I asked Kagan whether the Constitution gave Congress the authority to...

From a purely tactical stand-point, the implications of what Estrada is saying are obvious: If the Democrats block nominees on ideological grounds -- as they did with Estrada -- and the Republicans rely on traditional credentials, eschewing ideology, we will wind up with a court of well-credentialed liberals.

Why We Must Carry the Fight Forward to Stop Elena Kagan Move America Forward For our troops, we must fight to keep Kagan off the highest bench in the land Today will be a historic day for our nation as the Senate Judiciary Committee will vote to either send Elena Kagan to the next step in her appointment process, or send her back to the office of Solicitor General, where she currently resides. Win or lose tomorrow, we must continue the fight to keep activist judges like Kagan, who don’t respect our military or our mission to defeat radical...